31

He spent that Sunday morning handing out his fliers and business cards. Zip insisted on helping him, and she didn’t even ask for anything in return. As a reward, Mick said he’d buy her a late lunch. Not at the tavern, though. Kids could eat in there from nine in the morning until eight in the evening, but Zip hated it. She didn’t like the smell of spilled beer. So, he promised to take her to the Sunny Café. She’d always liked ‘Uncle Spruce’s’ place, as she called it.

As the morning wore on and he worked his way north giving out fliers, Mick found himself outside Mr. Leabrook’s office. Glancing through the window, he saw his old employer sitting in the dark, with only pale daylight to illuminate the room. Mr. Leabrook refused to pay for artificed lamps, and he didn’t use his oil ones unless absolutely necessary.

Without really thinking too much about what he was going to do, Mick knocked on the door and walked in. Mr. Leabrook looked up and smiled. Then, as if remembering his default state of mind and public persona, he scowled.

“I’ve got a list of jobs as long as my arm, and Douggie Fernglass won’t do them without extra pay. Plus, I’m worried about Douggie anyhow. Says he keeps hearing birdsong, when there are no birds around.”

“He works hard,” said Mick. “Fella could use a rest.”

“Well, he’s taking up your slack. Are you happy now? This is what happens when you quit on people. Even the prisoners in the revolt of ’88 gave two weeks’ notice.”

There was no seat in front of Mr. Leabrook’s reclaimed school desk. Chairs implied that visitors were welcome and encouraged them to stay. So, instead, he stood on the other side of the desk.

“Haven’t seen you around to thank you, Mr. Leabrook,” he said. “The office you got for me-”

“I’m a bit busy, Mick,” he said.

Mick was a quick reader of people. It was a skill any would-be sleuth practiced, and the books he’d read about body language stood him in good stead. If he was interpreting this right, then Mr. Leabrook didn’t want to hear any thanks or appreciation. Maybe it embarrassed him.

Even so, he couldn’t let a good turn go unanswered. “Me, Nell, and the others are meeting at the King’s Head later. Quiz night. Always a spare seat at our table if you’re interested?”

“The tavern? No. Sorry. Not my kind of place.”

“Have you even been there lately?”

“The floors are always sticky, the place smells like stale beer, and old Jack Cooper’s always in there. Can’t resist goading me, the old fart. No, Mick, not my place at all.”

All good points, Mick thought. He happened to like the smell of stale beer, though, and he also relished a verbal jousting with Jack Cooper from time to time. Kept his wits fresh. The old artificer was the kind of guy who, if you pushed back at him, he respected you.

If Mr. Leabrook didn’t like the tavern, what kind of invite might he accept? Someplace nice and quiet, maybe? Ah – maybe he had it.

“Me and my niece are having lunch at the Sunny when we’re done with the fliers. Would be great if you joined us.”

Mr. Leabrook looked up from the papers he was studying. “Really?”

“I know you don’t eat at the Sunny much. You’d like it.”

“Why pay for someone to cook food when I can do it at home? That’s what I say.”

“And I’m with you, but it’s also nice to treat yourself from time to time. Come on. What do you say?”

Mr. Leabrook was awhile in answering, but finally, he said, “Alright. Fine. But actually, now that you’re here, there is something I want to talk to you about.”

“If it’s about some kind of job…”

“It is. But a sleuthing one.”

Mr. Leabrook said it was better to just show him than to tell him about it. So, he put on his coat and hat with a peacock feather in it, locked up his office, and the pair of them walked through Coiner’s Way. They had just gone past Lee Hunter’s store, when Mr. Leabrook spotted Leroy Macintyre in the distance. Leroy owned a store where he sold puppets, and he and Mr. Leabrook were always at loggerheads.

The problem, according to Mr. Leabrook, was that Leroy’s window displays were hideous. One day he had grown sick of seeing them, and he told Leroy so.

“But it’s Scamps’ Eve – they’re supposed to be hideous,” Leroy had said.

“It’ll scare people away. Can’t you tone it down, Mr. Macintyre? Perhaps one zombie puppet and two witches?”

That had been months ago, and the pair had been locked in battle ever since. If Mr. Leabrook could spot a regulation Leroy was breaking, he’d write him up quicker than he could blink. If Leroy’s careful perusal of his tenancy contract mentioned a service that Mr. Leabrook was duty-bound to perform as manager of Coiner’s Way, he made sure he did it, required or not.

Leroy waved at him to get his attention. Mr. Leabrook stopped walking and tugged on Mick’s sleeve, while gesturing at the alley just ahead. There, they ducked out of view.

“He’s going to ask me to arrange for a gutter inspection, Michael. It’s in his tenancy agreement that I have to arrange for it to happen quarterly. When the other store owners see Leroy’s getting looked at, they’ll all want it. Do gutters really need inspecting so often?”

“Likely not, but they’re a pain in the arse if they get blocked. Once, maybe twice a year at a push ought to do it. Why’d you write it into the contract, if you’re so bothered?”

“I used a template contract from that damned Victor Gaskill. State funding was much more generous when he was manager. I’ve got my own contracts drawn up now, but until the fixed tenancies on the old contracts run out, I’m stuck to their terms. Leroy is bleeding my budget dry, Michael. The state doesn’t give any extra funding these days, only the basic that is required. Taxes don’t go far, you know. The town doesn’t turn a profit on Coiner’s Way. If this carries on, I won’t be able to buy artificed grit for winter, and those cobbles can be treacherous.”

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“Just tell him no.”

“He’s asking for things that his tenancy allows for. I can’t refuse.”

“Maybe if you settle this little feud, he won’t keep badgering you,” said Mick. “I doubt Leroy cares a damn about you getting his gutters looked at. Be the bigger person.”

“I’d rather pluck out my eyes.”

“I suppose you better get the gutter people out, then, and get them checked. Not much else for it. And when winter comes, maybe you could pay for grit out of your own pocket.”

“I’d rather climb through a forest of pine needles, naked.”

“It’s one or the other, Mr. Leabrook. Sometimes, folks just need to get along. Leroy’s an okay guy. You’ve driven him to this.”

“Excuse me?” said Mr. Leabrook. “Who do you think you’re-” he paused then, taking on the look of a man who had something dawning on him. Must have been the knowledge that Mick didn’t work for him anymore, and could say what he liked. The knowledge seemed to drain him.

Mick pressed on, “Just try apologizing. Might stick in your craw at first, but it’ll be so much better than this stupid feud you’ve got going on.”

Leroy caught up with them. He was holding a puppet in his hand. It was a nightmarish thing, some kind of monster with long claws and a hunched back. Mick quite liked it.

Mr. Macintyre didn’t just make and sell puppets but was an accomplished puppeteer himself, and he was always practicing. Even now, speaking to him and Mr. Leabrook, Leroy was puppeteering. He set the puppet so it was standing on the cobbles, and whatever gestures Leroy made, the monster also did.

Both man and monster pointed at Mr. Leabrook. “You haven’t had my gutters inspected yet. It’s a week overdue.”

Mr. Leabrook scowled. “Your gutters are fine.”

Man and monster crossed their arms. “Last time I checked they weren’t see through, so I’d love to know how you can be so sure. How about you get someone out to take a look? I have a solicitor, you know. Kiera Mulroon. ”

Mr. Leabrook looked sidelong at Mick. “Your sister?”

“She’s studying for her tokens, Mr. Leabrook. She needs to get experience somehow.”

The monster jabbed a claw at Mr. Leabrook, and Leroy said, “How about you do what you’re supposed to do?”

“How about you-“ began Mr. Leabrook, stopping when Mick gently elbowed him. He cleared his throat. “I suppose, looked at in a certain way, one might go as far as to say, perhaps in some light, from a particular point of view…”

The puppet monster tipped its head to the side like a dog trying to understand what its human was saying. Leroy waited patiently, most likely surprised at Mr. Leabrook’s unusually soft, maybe even conciliatory, tone.

Mr. Leabrook continued, “Perhaps I was a little harsh, with the window display. You were, uhm, only trying to sell your wares. And your puppets do have a certain workmanship to them.”

It was hardly a glowing review, but Mick just hoped that Leroy was the kind of guy who could see a rose for the thorns.

The body language of both the puppet monster and its puppeteer softened. “Well, I know you’re a busy man, Mr. Leabrook. I don’t want to be a nag, really I don’t. You’ve driven me to this.”

“I suppose we can leave the matter there, then?”

“Suppose we can, for now. Shake on it?”

Mr. Leabrook had the look of a man who’d never been asked to shake hands in his life. He also seemed confused as to whether to grab the man’s hand or the puppet’s, since both had theirs extended. In the end, he shook Leroy’s hand first, and then took the puppet’s claw and gave that a generous shake, too.

Their diversion over with, Mr. Leabrook led Mick to the far end of Coiner’s Way, heading in the direction of the town plaza, where crafters’ markets were usually held. He was the market manager as well as being in charge of Coiner’s Way, meaning he considered this whole stretch from the King’s Head and all the way to the town gates at the end of the plaza to be his domain. Just as one more step would have seen them leaving Coiner’s Way, Mr. Leabrook stopped.

“What do you make of this?” he said.

At first, Mick didn’t know what Mr. Leabrook was pointing at. His finger was directed at the back wall of the last store on Coiner’s Way. This was vacant, since Otis Thompson, who used to run the Full Steam Ahead clothes pressing store, had gone to Larking to live with his granddaughter and her husband.

If there was anything untoward, then he couldn’t see it. It was just a wall forming the yard outside a brick building, nothing more, nothing less. The wall was cracked in places and overdue having the mortar repointed, but there was certainly nothing unusual.

As he looked, though, the finer details seemed to settle in his mind, and it was then that he saw it. One of the red bricks had been chipped away enough to make a crevice inside, and in that crevice was a little statuette of a monster.

Small and squat, maybe the size of his thumb, and with gray skin and red eyes. A hideous little thing. It seemed to be staring straight at them, or maybe past them.

“Kids’ toy?” said Mick.

“Try moving it.”

He did. The monster statue was stuck fast inside its brick grotto.

“Still think it’s just kids messing around. Glued their toy here as a joke,” he said.

“Why would they do that? What’s the joke?”

Mick shrugged. “Me and Kiera, we used to take turns dressing up in Granny Wells’ shawl and headscarf. We’d grab her walking stick, then walk through town pretending we were old. The more people we fooled, the happier we were. No rhyme nor reason to it. Kids do stupid stuff.”

“I don’t know, Mick. Seems very peculiar to me, that someone would take the time to chip away the brick and then stick a statue in there.”

More details began to stand out to him. The positioning of the statuette, for instance. The brick that had been carved away was near the top of the wall – too high up for a kid to reach. They could have used a ladder, of course, but the more complexity you added to the prank, the more unlikely it seemed to be something innocent. Most kids were only opportunist pranksters and wouldn’t go to much trouble for their japes.

“It’s a puzzle, alright,” said Mick. “Doesn’t seem to be doing any harm, but my tokens aren’t fussy. Experience is experience. I’ll look into it.”

“Right you are.”

“Well, then. Now that’s settled, how about we go find my niece, and we’ll get some grub? I’m as hungry as a horse.”

Mick returned home that night exhausted from spending all day handing out fliers and business cards. He’d spread word of his new sleuthing enterprise far and wide – at least in Sunhampton terms, which didn’t mean far or wide at all. At any rate, there could be no doubt now that people knew what he was doing, and where he was doing it. Some of them were even out of towners, which meant news of his enterprise might reach somewhere as exotic as Perentee, perhaps.

Opening his front door, he called out hello to Ma, only to hear a strange sound. A sort of panicked commotion. He crossed briskly into the living room, where he saw Ma and her friend, George, standing near the sofa. George had lipstick around his mouth.

Mick sighed. Always with the pretending. The pair of them were old enough to make their own mistakes, by his reckoning, and he wished Ma nothing but happiness. If any covering up of this relationship, affair, dalliance – whatever it was – were needed, then it didn’t come from Mick’s side. It had been so long since Pa passed now. If Ma was enjoying herself, what was the problem?

No, this idea of keeping it a secret, it was from Ma’s side. Mick half suspected she liked the idea of having to hide something. Kind of how Zip enjoyed when Keira told her off.

So, he always kept up the pretense. Pretended he knew nothing about Ma and her old friend George. He sometimes even acted like he was a little bit suspicious, but stopping short of actually accusing them and ruining the game.

“Micky!” said Ma. “George was just…returning a book.”

“Right you are. Hey, George.”

“Michael. How do you do.”

This was said not as a question, but as a statement. A prerequisite greeting said out of polite obligation. George was an ex-army colonel. A stern guy, but not in a bad sort of way. He was pleasant enough, it was just that he was wound tighter than a lute string. You couldn’t just shake off years and years of discipline. He was a widower like Ma, and they had met when George’s veteran’s club had booked the party room at the King’s Head tavern to have their annual meeting.

“What book was he returning?” said Mick. “I don’t see one.”

“I mean we were talking about books. George was returning with his opinion on the book.”

“Oh, right. What book was it?”

Ma raised one eyebrow at George, who coughed and said, “Gaskin’s account of the Easterly – Turen conflict of ’56, pieced together from witness accounts at the time.”

“I didn’t know you were into military history, Ma. Never seen that book on our shelf. How was it?”

George said, “Very enlightening. But anyway, I heard you’re getting into sleuthing, Michael.” Again, this was said as a statement, and not a question.

“Yup. Working for my tokens.”

“An honorable thing to do. Best of luck to you.”

“Thanks, George.”